Sunday, July 17, 2016

Patrol Angis - An AAR and Thoughts on the Game

I have gotten several games of Patrol Angis played through now. 4 solo games and 1 with my buddy Darby using the miniatures from the starter set I bought a while back. First I'll let you have a look at the game I played this evening.

Scenario: The Prydian Forces (Red/White) are planning to break through a defensive position setup by the League of Yordan (Green/Yellow).

League of Yordan starting positions...

The Prydian Assault.

For the first turn of the scenario, I gave the Prydian forces the initiative. They did a normal die roll to determine the number of activation tokens to be issued out to the two sides. The Prydian forces move up one of their assault rifle teams and hit the enemy team on the hill. The fire is devastating, killing over half the enemy team. They fail morale and lost their activation token. A good start for the Prydians!

The League of Yordan troops send in the Duxis battlesuits and hit the assault rifle team pretty hard. This takes up their one activation for the turn. The Prydians had put 2 activations on their support weapon team, so they moved up and on the second activation hit the Duxis battlesuits managing to put down the suit with the howitzer. Things are looking even better!

During the 2nd turn, using a their jump jets the Prydian close assault team gets in a close as they can to hit the support weapon team on the hill. Sadly their fire is pretty ineffective (only 1 casualty) due to having to snap-shot on the run.

The 3rd turn is a hard swing in favor of the League. They have too much fire power. Especially with the Espaten team on the far hill. The large mounted lasers rip the assault team to shreds leaving only 1 survivor.

The remaining Duxis have also been doing some cleanup work on their end. Finishing off the Prydian support weapons team and the assault rifle team.

The Prydian leader calls for the retreat.

Meanwhile, the poor soldier left on the hill offers the enemy a chance of surrender...

Patrol Angis Thoughts...
I have to say I really like this game. It definitely holds to it's claim of being a One-Hour Wargame. The action is fast and brutal. Cover is very important for survival, but it basically comes down to the fact that if you can shoot someone, they can shoot you back. So if you don't like taking heavy casualties, this game will be tough for you!

Another thing that's pretty important in this game is winning initiative. Not only do you get an extra activation. But you get to pick all the casualties that a both sides take during that turn. As in the case of the first round when the Prydian support unit managed a total of 5 wounds on the 3 Duxis battlesuits. Each Duxis has a total of 5 damage points it can take before being destroyed. If the Yordan player had the initiative, they could have distributed the 5 wounds between the 3 Duxis figures and kept them all in action. Instead the Prydian player had initiative and was able to put them all on one Duxis, and also picked the one with the indirect fire weapon (that ignores cover bonuses)!

There's quite a bit of flexibility in how you can create your forces. It certainly lends itself to a space opera feel. One thing I have noticed with the starter though, is that it's pretty easy for this game to get imbalanced. 5 games so far and the Prydians have lost every game. I think I can even it up pretty soon with a few tweaks once I get some new troops painted up. But the warning here is if you don't have friends that like a gentlemanly game, it could be very frustrating.

I'm looking forward to tweaking my armies and getting some more games in. I also picked up the new vehicle rules so I'm sure there will be some more heavy hitters appearing on the battlefield as well.

Excellent and thank you for this excellent report Rod. Patrol Angis is fast and lethal and very space opera plus it is a cover fixated game (much like Firefight 2.0). I look forward to what you do next. Would you mind if I linked to this article from the blog and website for Ion Age?